KerryJ's Neotenous Tech

Every 15 seconds another mobile account is added to the more than 3 billion existing ones according to an April 2008 press release from the GSM Association. So when I saw a web site promising me the ability to create a mobile compatible web site in minutes just after lunch today — I thought I’d check it out. I signed up for mobisitegalore.com and was really impressed by the user interface. They were a bit short on specs and measurements however — when I got to the step where I had to upload my logo, I had NO idea what size to choose and had to use a FireFox tool to get the size of their example. You can import a feed from your existing blog — so you don’t have to worry about having ANOTHER blog to update, you can feed your headlines straight into the mobile version. Other options include payment systems, a feedback/contact form that was easy as pie to implement, an HTML editor, choice of HTML, ASP or PHP pages, ability to customise templates and the ability to get free hosting and a domain name or use one of your own. I thought their free domain name a bit long — http://myname.websiteforever.mobi. At least, it is to thumb it into my phone the first time — though with my keyboard, that’s no longer a problem for me. I published it there and it worked a treat. I then published to my own server, and no go. An hour and a half of investigation later, I discovered the problem. When using their publisher, folder permissions on our Apache server were set to something different for the home page (776) than the rest of the pages (644). Re-setting this fixed the problem. Still, if I were after a quickie site for say — a conference for geeks, a learning activity for students involving the use of mobile phones or an event personal or professional – this tool would be handy and people could live with the longish address. Especially people under 35 or so. ; ) I host the site myself on kerryj.mobi — let me know what you think!

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